Time’s up for the Yes2Rail blog, which I launched on June 30, 2008 as a paid consultant on Honolulu's elevated rail project. Yes2Rail’s August 13, 2012 post was its last following the author's move to Sacramento, CA. You’re invited to read four-plus years of information-packed entries, many of which are linked at our “aggregation site.” Look for the paragraph with red copy in the right-hand column, below. Mahalo for all the positive comments Yes2Rail received since its start.

Tired of all those campaign
ads on TV and radio? Looking for
messages that aren’t approved by a candidate? For a change of pace, stop by at the
Letters to the Editor page of Honolulu’s only daily newspaper.

Yes2Rail has done that
numerous times over the months and does it again today to make a point: What
you read there may have some value, but like so many of those campaign spots,
they may leave out important facts. Here’s an example from today’s paper(subscription).

But first, a Yes2Rail
Disclaimer: The following letter is quoted for educational purposes only and
appears exactly as printed in today’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Its
inclusion in this post does not imply support or criticism by Yes2Rail of any
candidates in the Honolulu Mayoral race. As for Richard Borreca's column today, we'll get to it tomorrow to see if our January prediction is still holding true – that he'd write not one paragraph of positive comment about rail in 2012. Spoiler Alert: Don't hold your breath.

Cayetano is not against
all rail(Honolulu
Star-Advertiser, 7/31)

In the rush to give the
nod for the mayor’s race to Kirk Caldwell (“Top city post should go to
Caldwell,” Star-Advertiser, Our View, July 29), the Star-Advertiser
conveniently overlooks what former Gov. Ben Cayetano has stated many times.

Last week, the
Star-Advertiser quoted Cayetano as saying, “I’m open to light rail” (Ben
Cayetano: Former Governor finds many agree with his position on rail,”
Star-Advertiser, July 25).

He advocates building a
much less expensive light-rail system that is at ground level, similar to the
MAX system in Portland, Oregon. Actually, It’s Kirk Caldwell whose rail plans
are murky. He says he wants to change the design and some routes but has given
no details on either. It is important to make sure that candidates are
carefully vetted on what they say they will do, not on what we want them to
say.

The Kailua resident who
authored the letter makes a good point: Candidates’ preferences for addressing
Oahu’s growing traffic congestion issues need careful scrutiny and vetting. As
an educational tool about Honolulu’s planned elevated rail system, Yes2Rail has
traditionally compared the current plan with the alternatives proposed by
others in the community.

For example, Cliff Slater
and Panos Prevedouros have advocated for High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) roads, and our commentaries have positioned elevated rail as superior to those
roads. The above letter implicitly supports construction of a light-rail system
– something akin to what Portland has built. Let’s take a look.

Death on the Rails

Light-rail transit kills
people. It happens everywhere trains are built at ground level in the mix of
trains, vehicles and pedestrians.

Portland has recorded at
least two dozen deaths on the MAX system since 1986. The most recent fatality
listed at the Summary of MAX Fatalities website – number 26 – was in January
2011, but another web source puts the number at 28 through June 2011. A Portland TV station carried a video report from which the graphic at the top of today's post was pulled.

Whatever the true number,
the point is obvious: At-grade trains pose a lethal threat to pedestrians and
vehicular passengers, and one can imagine the threat as exceptionally significant considering Honolulu's aging population. “But all travel has risks,” light-rail defenders may say.
Honolulu rail supporters can counter with this accurate statement:

By being elevated above
street level, the possibility of pedestrian-train interaction will be
completely eliminated. There will be no crosswalks, no intersections and no
possibility of vehicle and pedestrian accidents as shown in the numerous
photographs in our right-hand column.

Those are the facts about
light-rail’s safety compared to Honolulu’s future elevated line – an issue you
haven’t read about in recent months in Honolulu’s only daily newspaper.

Another Letter

Let’s end on a lighter note
today by quoting from a second rail-related letter in today’s Star-Advertiser:

We would like to make
some key points that we think are overlooked in the discussion about rail.
First, it is flat wrong to claim that rail won’t reduce traffic congestion.
Congestion might not be reduced across the island overall, but rail is going to
reduce the increase in congestion. (Yes2Rail
comment: This is the same point made here last week.)

Second, Oahu citizens
have long gone along with developing the “second city.” Now that it is heavily
populated, its residents deserve a proper transportation infrastructure.
Rush-hour traffic to and from the west side is horrendous and by far the worst
on the island.

Third, rail will benefit
those who cannot afford cars. It will provide a much quicker transit, for
example, for those who provide all the tourist services in Waikiki that
generate tax revenue benefiting us all. Our political culture has rested on
bedrock principles of fairness and looking out for the little guy; are we now
abandoning those principles?

Transportation equity, one
of rail’s four main goals, was Yes2Rail’s subject as recently as July 27. We’re
pleased the two Kaneohe residents who wrote this letter appreciate equity as a
bedrock principle of the Honolulu rail project.

There you have it – two letters
that could be launching pads for further exploration for anybody who cares to
know the facts about Honolulu’s future fast, frequent, reliable and safe
elevated rail system.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Shake your head, throw down
the newspaper in disgust, stomp off to write a letter to the editor. They’re
all understandable responses among supporters of the Honolulu rail project to
the latest journalistic fumbling of the rail issue.

JULY 31 UPDATE: Eagle-eyed readers found a major error in the first paragraph of the Star-Advertiser's story on its new rail poll. See their Comments below this Yes2Rail post.The Honolulu
Star-Advertiser and Hawaii News
Now have completed their latest
joint misadventure into the world of political polling. Call it Alice in
Wonderland journalism if you like, but whatever you call it, the poll and some of the
reporting associated with it show what can happen when well-intentioned people
blindly fall into the rabbit hole.

Within a story that reported the results(subscription) showing minority support for rail, here’s the key sentence in
today’s story: “The rail question was asked of 509
very likely Oahu voters in the upcoming primary.”

Consider first that “very
likely Oahu voters” are obviously not representative of the whole population –
not in a state where the turnout of registered voters in 2008 ranked dead last
in the country when only 51.8 percent of all adult citizens voted. And that was with a native son on the presidential ballot!

Then ask yourself who the
non-voters are and how they differ from the “very likely Oahu voters.” It
shouldn’t take you more than a couple minutes of web searching to conclude that
non-voters are indeed much different than those who exercise their right to
vote.

National polling
organizations need to understand who votes and who doesn’t, because to ignore
the differences is to court national embarrassment – or worse. Here’s what the
Pew Research Center found in 2006 about Voting and Demographic Factors:

“Not only do the rich
seem to get richer, on Election Day…they will probably get a disproportionately
large say about who gets elected to Congress. So will older people, whites,
college graduates and those who frequently go to church, the survey finds.
Among those likely to once again stand on the sidelines…: relatively large
numbers of young people, Hispanics, and those with less education and lower
incomes….”

Who doesn’t vote
regularly? The less money you make, the less likely it is that you vote. The
Pew people found differences in the education levels attained, income, marriage
status and church attendance and broke them out in the chart at right.

Interesting enough to
continue reading? We hope so, because selecting out the “very unlikely Oahu
voters” on a question about rail is more than suspect. One could conclude doing
so is an irresponsible approach to understanding the level of rail’s support
throughout the entire population and what rail will mean to everybody.

An Obligation To Serve

Why does that matter?
Because government-funded infrastructure servesall citizens, not just voters or likely voters. Since that’s
inarguably the case, why does it make sense for this and other polls, including
one conducted for Civil Beat, to exclude non-voters from their surveys?

It makes sense only if
you’re interested in finding out which candidate is likely to win an election.
Clearly, that’s the big question on Oahu this summer in a primary election that
pits two pro-rail candidates against one who vows to kill the project.

But surveying only likely
voters is counterproductive in understanding what the entire population thinks
about rail, including the segment that’s more likely to be dependent on public
transit – the segment that is less educated and makes less money than voters.

How the Star-Advertiser and HNN
miss this critical distinction is beyond comprehension, but they have, and if
you’ve been paying close attention to the media coverage on rail, you probably
know that the media have not helped the public understand rail well during the
past several months.

Bizarre Reporting

Reporters who should have
been asking the anti-rail candidate for details about his alleged substitute
transportation plan to replace rail didn’t do that. Maybe they’re afraid to ask
the tough-talking former governor tough questions, but they passed up countless
opportunities to do so. It was left to an editorial writer to finally ask“What
exactly is Cayetano’s transit plan?”
more than four months after his official announcement.

But the media strangeness
continues to this very day in this morning’s poll story. Consider this:

“(Anti-rail Cliff) Slater said he believes support
for rail erodes as people realize that traffic congestion will increase even
after the city spends billions of dollars on it. He faulted Honolulu’s major
media outlets for failing to make clear to the public that Oahu’s roads inevitably
will become more congested as the city grows(emphasis
added).”

We added the emphasis to
highlight the bizarre nature of this quote. If anything, the media can be faulted for not deconstructing Mr. Slater's #1
talking point to make it absolutely clear that of courseOahu’s roads inevitably will become more
congested as the city grows!

The city grows – ergo, more
people will be driving more cars on the same highway infrastructure. That’s not
hard to understand, yet the media rarely if ever have challenged the Cliff
Slater quote machine about his on-its-face-true statement that he uses to criticize the rail project. He goes unquestioned about his intended outcome for more reliance on the private
automobile and fewer choices for public transit.

Media Breakdown

Yes2Rail faults Honolulu’s
major media outlets for failing to expose Mr. Slater’s attempt to
blame rail for failing to reduce congestion as a cynical attempt to confuse the
population with misleading anti-rail arguments. Rail’s purpose is not to reduce
congestion, which is impossible given Oahu's space restrictions; its purpose is to give citizens a way to avoid congestion.

Mr. Slater’s influence on
this and earlier rail projects is indisputable, and his major anti-rail argument has become a key talking point of the anti-rail mayoral candidate, who also incongruously complains congestion will be worse in the future with rail than it is today.

The city’s Wayne Yoshioka
had it right when he responded to this non-shocker with, “No kidding….”

And no kidding, media
coverage of rail this year has been less than exemplary. Oahu citizens are the unwitting victims of a breakdown in journalistic professionalism – the
insistence that only voters’ opinions on rail should matter, the failure to
probe for the rail-killing candidate’s transportation plan and the uncritical coverage of the man who is more responsible than anyone else for delaying the
construction of transportation alternatives on Oahu.

Borrowing from President
Lincoln’s famous phrase, how this serves the best interests of all the
people on Oahu is hard to
understand.

For more information on mainland polling companies' views of the non-voter issue, see an essay by the Gallup organization. Also noteworthy is the emphasis The Political Dictionary places on likely voters
as being “more valuable for election-related purposes than all registered
voters or all adults (emphasis added).” Your own Internet searches undoubtedly will prove
fruitful in understanding the differences between voters and non-voters.Also, be sure to read the comments posted below.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

As this blog has insisted
for months, Yes2Rail is not a politics-oriented blog, and what’s written here isn’t
political. In that vein, you’ll have to read the Honolulu Star-Advertiser yourself to learn the paper’s pick in the 2012 mayoral
race.

But since Yes2Rail is an educational source of
information on the Honolulu rail project, we will repeat here some of the
reasons the Star-Advertiser’s
editorial says the anti-rail candidate doesn’t deserve to be elected.

By way of background,
Yes2Rail began asking what former Governor Ben Cayetano had in mind instead of
rail right after he announced his candidacy in January. Since he vowed he’d
kill rail, that was a legitimate issue to raise, and we raised it on January 20
one day after Mr. Cayetano’s announcement.

“…this is a one-issue
blog – Honolulu rail – and we’re sticking to our naïve notion that if a
candidate wants to kill the rail project, which has been planned and vetted for
at least six years at the local and national level with a clear set of goals
and designs down to the last girder and bolt, the candidate owes the electorate
something more than saying it costs too much and is ugly.”

For weeks, Yes2Rail seemed
to be the only entity asking for the candidate’s transportation plan. From this
former reporter’s perspective, the media’s failure to ask about it was
egregious.

So out of frustration,
Yes2Rail posted open letters to individual reporters at the Star-Advertiser,
Pacific Business News and Hawaii News Now urging them to gird their
loins and ask Mr. Cayetano for his detailed plan on what he’d implement instead
of rail to address Oahu’s nearly intolerable traffic congestion in the
east-west corridor.

Still they demurred, and a Star-Advertiser editorial finally asked – maybe also out of
frustration – on May 21st – “What exactly is Cayetano’s transit
plan?”

“…since it’s mayoral
front-runner (at the time) Ben
Cayetano who wants to unplug Honolulu’s hard-won advances toward a fixed-rail
solution,”the editorial said,“he
is the one who needs to deliver the goods. Professor Cayetano, take the podium
and enlighten us.”

(Yes2Rail observation:Since that was exactly what Yes2Rail had been urging since Day One, maybe a blog’s effectiveness should be
measured by more than its gross number of visits.)

But Mr. Cayetano never did
enlighten the community with a detailed plan to implement his bus rapid transit
idea – no specifics on construction costs, routes, frequencies, operating and
maintenance expenses, impact on congestion or BRT’s ability to accomplish
rail’s goals.

Today’s Editorial

Two months after the
newspaper’s “what the plan?” editorial, the Star-Advertiser is still not satisfied and writes today:

“At the outset of
Cayetano’s candidacy, we were eager to hear about his traffic initiative: a
profound, workable alternative perhaps? Disappointingly, no. There is no
revelatory plan, just a half-baked proposal hastily hatched from a 2003 bus
rapid transit study.

“Cayetano talks vaguely
about a dedicated bus way using the freeway’s Zipper Lane, a new ‘flyover’ ramp
approaching town, and perhaps taking a lane each of King and Beretania streets
for buses, which would still need to heed the stop-and-go traffic signals.

“Is that enough to get
motorists to leave their cars behind? Hardly. Also vague were the financial and
political means to make this BRT scheme happen.”

The editorial requires a
subscription to the newspaper if you want to read it online, and you’re on your
own in learning whom the paper endorses, because we’re not saying.

But we are saying this: Rail’s
goals, which have been vetted and approved for years, cannot be
accomplished by BRT or any other transportation scheme that’s been proposed as
an alternative to rail.

We've been highlighting those goals since early 2011, but if today is the first time
you read them, maybe you’ll now be able to judge for yourself why
only grade-separated rail transit can deliver fast, frequent, reliable and safe
transportation for Oahu residents between the ewa plain and town.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Is anybody still stuck on
the fence over the Honolulu rail issue? It’s unlikely at this late date, but
those without a firm opinion might well consider a commentary in Tuesday’s
Star-Advertiser.

The newspaper headlined the
piece The rail will provide equal access to social and economic opportunity. Its authors are Mario Ramil, retired Hawaii Supreme
Court associate justice; Howard Garval, CEO of Child and Family Service; Sotero
Jucutan, president of the Oahu Association of Filipino Catholic Clubs, and the
Rev. Bob Nakata, executive committee member of Faith Action for Community
Equity’s Oahu Chapter.

Here’s the opening paragraph
for those without a subscription:

“In the ongoing debate
over rail, there has been a lot of discussion about the cost of rail but very
little discussion about how rail provides equal access to social and economic
opportunity to everyone regardless of age, race, economic status or
disability.”

A search of the
Star-Advertiser archives shows that nearly all of the focus on equity has come
from the FACE group itself. Yes2Rail tried to move the discussion toward the
project’s four goals, including social equity, early in 2011 when the blog highlighted the goals as described in the project’s Final Environmental Impact
Statement.

It was an attempt to provide
some contrast between the opponents’ objections about cost and traffic
reduction and the project’s intended outcomes that would last for generations.

As the commentary’s authors
note, there’s been little discussion of those goals, and if there has been any
media coverage of them, we can’t recall when. It’s easier to write about Cliff
Slater’s latest blast about rail delivering too little at too great a cost or
his proposal to build a toll road instead of rail.

As Yes2Rail said on January
11, 2011, “Equity is a good filter to use when evaluating anti-railers’
alternatives to the rail project, such as High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) roads and
elevated busways that lack stops or stations along the route…. HOT lanes fail
the equity test by not serving those who don’t own cars, beyond that poit, HOT
lanes serve only those who can afford to pay the toll! And elevated busways
that bypass communities along the route also fail to equitably serve all
potential users.”

Inequity for West Oahu
Residents

The authors lift the
definition of equity from the FEIS – “…the fair distribution of resources so
that no group carries an unfair burden of the negative environmental, social,
or economic impacts or receives an unfair share of benefits.”

With that as a yardstick,
“an inequity exists for those who live in West Oahu,” they write and then list
several examples. Among them is the burden of locating municipal facilities
there because they’re unwanted elsewhere, including the landfill, and the
region’s poor transportation infrastructure.

Continuing: “…the burden
is even greater for the many lower-income and minority workers who live in West
Oahu and commute to work in downtown Honolulu or Waikiki. They have among the longest
travel distances and their commute is made even longer by severe traffic
congestion, now the worst in the nation….

“Those who can’t afford
to drive – or are too young, too old or physically unable to drive – depend on
public transit. They have only one option and must suffer delays and undertain
schedules because of those delays. They spend two to three hours – sometimes
more – just going to and from work, school or medical appointments on any given
day. Can we say that these groups of people have equal access to all places?
No. They have been locked out of opportunity.”

Concern for Others

“I’ll never ride the
train” is the first thing you
hear from many rail opponents, but the commentary’s description of the
inequities that burden west-siders might be persuasive for anyone who can think
beyond their own circumstances.

The authors end their piece
with the factors that stand up well against opponents’ accusation that “nobody
will ride” rail:

• Approximately 70 percent
of the island’s population lives along the rail route.

• 83 percent of Oahu’s jobs
are located along the rail route.

• The rail route will
connect three University of Hawaii system campuses.

• Rail will be faster and
more predictable than buses and provides a more efficient and enjoyable
transportation experience.

• Rail transit is a
meaningful transportation alternative that saves both time and money.

• Higher density housing
around transit stations may also open up lower-cost housing options for
families.

If you know anyone who’s
still a fence sitter on the rail project, send them this commentary or at least
Yes2Rail’s summary of its main points. The blog’s January 3, 2011 post listed
the project’s four goals; here’s the FEIS’s paragraph on equity:

Equity is about the fair
distribution of resources so that no group carries an unfair burden of the
negative environmental, social, or economic impacts or receives an unfair share
of benefits. Many lower-income and minority workers who commute to work in
the PUC (Primary Urban Center) Development Plan area live in the corridor
outside of the urban core. Transit-dependent households concentrated in the
Pearl City, Waipahu, and Makakilo areas (Figure 1-9) rely on transit
availability, such as TheBus, for access to jobs in the PUC Development Plan
area. Delay caused by traffic congestion accounts for nearly one-third of
the scheduled time for routes between Ewa and Waikiki. Many lower-income
workers also rely on transit because of its affordability. These
transit-dependent and lower-income workers lack a transportation choice that
avoids the delay and schedule uncertainty currently experienced by TheBus. In
addition, Downtown median daily parking rates are the highest among U.S.
cities, further limiting access to Downtown by lower-income workers. Improvements
to transit availability and reliability would serve all transportation system
users, including minority and moderate- and low-income populations(emphasis
added).

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Yes2Rail is nearing its end
as a Honolulu rail project communications tool, so we’re giving it a new look for the
final three weeks before Drop-Dead Day, August 16th.

The main reason we’re out
the door, it seems, is because a minority of City Council members thinks we’ve
been “unethical” in commenting on mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano’s
transportation plans.

To them, commenting on those
plans and comparing them against the rail project is the same as “criticizing”
the candidate. Maybe only sitting politicians see it that way and prefer a
sanitized approach to examining the option proposed by Mr. Cayetano.

Yes2Rail has been
communicating about Honolulu rail for four years now, including what opponents
offer as allegedly better alternatives. They include Cliff Slater’s and Panos
Prevedouros’ high-occupancy toll roads, as well as Mr. Cayetano’s new plan to
resurrect bus rapid transit from its failed iteration under the Harris
Administration.

If those plans don’t measure
up, Yes2Rail isn’t going to look the other way and ignore them. That would
amount to caving in to criticism instead of standing up and saying what needs
to be said.

The Spot

Mr. Cayetano’s newest radio
commercial, posted online by Civil Beat, begins by asking the listener, “Are you stuck in traffic right now?
If you are, let me ask you something: Will you take rail when it’s completed
ten to fifteen years from now?”

Barely 8 seconds into it,
the spot goes off the rails by suggesting the rail project won’t be completed
until 2022 or 2027. For the record, the project is scheduled to be fully
operational along its entire 20-mile line in eight years, and nothing but
wishful thinking by opponents backs up a longer time frame.

The spot then tells the
listener to “take a look at the guy in the car to the right of you. Do you
think he will use rail after the five billion dollar project is complete? Or
what about the person on the left of you? Do you think they will use rail? If
you don’t think so, you are correct.”

'You Are Correct'?

Just like that – you are
correct? Doesn’t it depend on where you’re driving when you’re creeping along
so slowly or stopped in traffic that you can safely look all around you? Of
course it does, yet the spot's message is that nobody is going to ride the train.

And that is not correct. Try
asking that question while sitting in traffic on the H-1 freeway
between Kapolei and town. That’s where rail will make a different – not principally on Kalanianaole Highway in East
Honolulu or on the trans-Koolau highways bringing in cars from the Windward Side.

Yet rail opponents,
including the mayoral candidate who vows to kill the project, want you to
believe rail would be a failure if only 2 percent of drive-time commuters
switch to rail. They want you to believe rail is allegedly supposed to be for everybody, which is preposterous.

Oahu’s biggest congestion
problem obviously is in the east-west corridor between the ewa plain communities and town. That’s where rail will make the biggest difference by attracting commuters to get off the roads and highways and start taking the train.

The radio spot completely
ignores that point, and this one, too: Even if you don’t ride the future train,
your driving experience will be better. Vehicle hours of delay with rail in
place by 2030 will be reduced by 18 percent – islandwide! Yes2Rail looked into this point three weeks ago today and provided links to the the Final Environmental Impact Statement’s
discussion on this significant congestion-reduction benefit.

Wanna Ride TheBus?

The spot concludes by
pitching a detail-less bus rapid transit plan that would cost less.

We can only speculate on
what the answers would be if you lowered your car window while parked on the
freeway and asked your neighbor if they’d rather be riding TheBus.

People who drive their own
personal vehicle already have made a decision to notride
TheBus, and there’s no reason to believe they’d flock to a less personal and less attractive kind
of transportation unless there were a perceivable up-tick in the experience.

As good a system as Honolulu
has, TheBus doesn’t measure up to what mode-switchers want, and residents who
switch and start taking the train will be doing it for a couple primary
reasons:

One, Honolulu’s elevated
rail system will avoid all traffic congestion, unlike any form of bus transit,
which somewhere along the route must operate in the mix of other traffic. And
two, they’ll save time and money in the process. Do the math.

Ignoring this deceptive
radio message – even in Yes2Rail’s final three weeks – would simply be a cop-out. If a politician wants to take us to task for telling
the truth, let him or her do so, but it would seem pretty peculiar.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

For a guy who claims to be
an international traveler, Dennis Callan seems remarkably unwilling to do what
people do in cities all over the world – walk!

Mr. Callan was the
co-founder and co-chair of the Stop Rail Now group that failed to stop rail in
the 2008 election; that’s him at right delivering an anti-rail petition to the
City Clerk’s Office four years ago. He’s still fighting rail as
a frequent contributor to anti-railer-in-chief Cliff Slater’s HonoluluTraffic.com website,
and he’s been writing commentaries for any publication that will publish them
for years. In its January 2009 edition, Hawaii Business carried his pessimistic views on transit-oriented
development.

His commentary in today’s Honolulu
Star-Advertiser (subscription required) also doubts the
viability of Honolulu rail because of the city’s allegedly too-low population
concentration near rail stations. The piece is a cleaned-up rehash of Mr. Callan’s letter to the Sierra Club after the group said it would openly endorse
the Honolulu rail project.

We dealt with his
low-density argument two weeks ago by quoting from the Flawed Urban Rail
Argumentswebsite – a handy source
of information to refute rail opponents’ arguments. Population density isn’t a
determining factor of a rail system’s ability to be effective, the site says. “Rather,
it is traffic density – the amount of people traveling along a particular route
– that’s important.”

Since all drive-time travel
between the ewa plain and town is through the narrow east-west urban corridor, Honolulu’s traffic density is
extraordinarily high, and that’s why the city was recently designated as having
the worst traffic congestion in the nation.

The Silly Part

The most remarkable aspect
of Mr. Callan’s piece today that deserves special attention isn’t the density
issue, which is just more of the same material he’s been pushing for years.

The most remarkable content
is his conclusion that waiting, walking and riding transit amounts to “a
complicated journey”– too complicated for Oahu residents. Here’s the best part of his piece, supplemented by our
comments after each of his trip segments:

Because of this current
lack of residents near stations, the city is hoping that Leeward commuters will
ride a bus and transfer to the train. But consider how many individual segments
such a daily round-trip would involve:

• Walk from your home to
the bus stop.Once rail is in place,
reconfigured bus routes will enhance TheBus’s attraction as an efficient way to
reach the nearest station.

• Wait for the bus. Regular bus riders will know the schedule and won’t
wait long.

• Ride the bus to the
train station. The ride will be
short compared to fighting miles of stand-still traffic on the H-1 or other
highways.

• Walk to the train.The bus stop will be at the station, just steps away.

• Wait for the train.During rush hour, trains will arrive every 3 minutes, and the headways could be shortened if demand becomes strong enough.

• Ride the train.Yes! Ride the train, avoid all surface congestion;
read, work on a computer, sleep or just enjoy the scenery.

• Walk or bus from train
to work.The final leg of a money-
and time-saving commute.

Now do everything in
reverse to get home: round-trip segments involving a lot of walking, waiting
and transferring. How many people would be willing to make such a complicated
journey?

Hundreds of millions of
people make this kind of trip each day all over the world; frequent traveler
Dennis Callan knows this to be true, yet he imagines it just can’t possibly
work on Oahu.

He and his fellow stop-rail
friends are positioning transit commuting on this island as too onerous for our
population – too “complicated” for individuals to embrace even though Oahu
commuters already pay some of the highest prices for gasoline in the country.

They already
have the worst traffic congestion, and judging from my recent experiences in
Sacramento, CA while buying groceries, subscribing to cable TV and Internet services
and signing up for a new health care plan, they’re paying much more
for all of that, too.

The Insulting Part

Mr. Callan essentially
argues that Oahu residents are too lazy to adopt a new commuting pattern that
will give them financial and life-style benefits. That’s bad enough, but then
he concludes his commentary with the specious argument we’ve come to expect
from the anti-rail crowd.

He blames rail for “leaving
horribly increased traffic congestion on our roads for decades to come.” It’s
Mr. Slater’s top anti-rail refrain – the suggestion that rail will be a failure because
congestion will increase after it is built. As rail supporters readily acknowledge, of course congestion will increase along with the population's growth!

Mr. Callan’s final sentence
mentions “real solutions or other pressing infrastructure needs” that he
implies would somehow reduce
traffic congestion for decades to come. It’s yet another insult to Oahu
residents’ intelligence to suggest there’s a magic bullet out there just
waiting to be implemented if only rail can be killed.

If you believe that, you may
also believe walking is bad for you.

Here’s the bottom line: Only
rail will give users a congestion-free trip through town while reducing traffic’s
growth rate on our streets and highways. Mr. Callan and his friends won’t tell you
that.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Today’s Yes2Rail post was as
good as written, but then I clicked on Cliff Slater’s website.

Mr. Slater, the man more
responsible than anyone else for the absence of a traffic-free way to travel through
Honolulu’s east-west corridor, has posted another irrelevant opinion that’s too
good to pass up.

For years I’ve publicized
the web-based writings of Mr. Slater and other rail opponents on the assumption that the more Oahu residents know about what the
opponents think, the less credible they’ll appear. (Here's a link to a post we particularly liked about Panos Prevedouros.)

“If every child, woman
and man on earth gave $1…it
would be just enough to build the Honolulu rail project if the cost overruns
were within reason. The world’s population is currently 7.1 billion. That’s
about what we think(emphasis added) it will cost with overruns.”

What Mr. Slater thinks about rail doesn't reflect rail's reality,
since what he thinks is driven by a car-first, mass-transit-last philosophy
that can’t possibly be in Oahu’s best long-term interests.

The $7 billion figure comes,
of course, from anti-rail ex-governor Linda Lingle’s “study” on rail’s finances that she
commissioned at a cost of 300,000 taxpayer dollars in the final months of her
term. It was a delaying tactic that pushed the whole project back several
months; Governor Neal Abercrombie officially approved and accepted rail’s Final
Environmental Impact Statement 10 days after he took office.

Mr. Slater’s Overrun Theory
also is dependent on other jurisdictions’ rail experiences, none of which are
relevant to Honolulu. Just because
a project in Puerto Rico or Jacksonville or anywhere else had an overrun is no
reason to automatically conclude it will happen here, but that's what Mr. Slater thinks.

Unraveling the Web

Cliff Slater's entire anti-rail campaign is a web of specious thought
threads strung together to seem plausible to the casual listener who has 2 seconds to
give it. It’s after 3 seconds that his rhetoric starts to unravel.

Take his #1 pitch: “Traffic
congestion with rail in the future will be worse than it is today….. That kinda
sums up the whole argument.”

Mr. Slater got an
enthusiastic reaction from a room full of Rotarians last year when he used that
“whole argument,” but in looking around the room, I saw others in the audience
who were already into their third second of thought about that statement.

Three seconds should be
enough to conclude that traffic congestion of course will increase in the future, with or
without rail, because the population will continue to grow.

The City’s Wayne Yoshioka
took apart that argument before the City Council and even got Mr. Slater to
admit that “…rail will have an effect on reducing traffic congestion from
what it might be if we did nothing at all….”

Yet the Two Second Types
invariably fall for this thin anti-rail argument, just as they’re undoubtedly
lapping up what Mr. Slater thinks about a cost overrun on Honolulu rail. Just
remember that the project already has hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted for unanticipated contingency
expenses during construction.

Say It Again

Repetition is a good
marketing technique, of course, and that’s why Yes2Rail has written about Mr.
Slater’s “whole argument” more times than we can count. And that’s why Mr.
Slater is so insistent that “the rail project is now in its death throes.”
That’s also at the top of his website this morning. It’s what he thinks, and he wants you to think it, too.

His string of “ifs” that he
thinks threaten the project includes the outcome of the mayoral race, the
outcome of the Gang of Four’s anti-rail federal lawsuit, the outcome of
congressional legislation to fund transportation projects and so on.

ABC Cliff – Always By Car – Slater’s legacy is still intact as the man who
killed rail two decades ago, but his place in Honolulu history as a spoiler will be reduced
to a footnote once the current project overcomes all obstacles and is built.

It's personal with Mr. Slater. No wonder he’s looking
desperate.

This post has been added to Yes2Rail's "aggregation site" under the Mr. Cliff Slater and Friendsheading.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Today’s letter to the editor recalls Spiro Agnew – he of the colorful alliterations, one of which is in our headline.

Here’s the letter:

Timing all wrong on rail

I strongly believe that
Honolulu should be investing in infrastructure projects, including
transportation projects that will provide benefits to its residents and
increase economic activity.

However, now is not the
right time for these projects. Infrastructure projects like Honolulu elevated
rail are important and might create some jobs, but they’re not as important as
other pressing matters, including
resolving our sewer system or fixing our roads.

Furthermore, if this
project continues to flounder about or even fail, what signal will that send to
potential investors in Hawaii? I’m afraid it will only be another sign that
investing in Hawaii is risky business.

Truth be told, this letter
is in today’s Sacramento Bee, not the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and
I inserted Honolulu-specific phrases and descriptions to replace the writer’s
references to California and the state’s high-speed rail project.

The point, of course, is
that negativity about rail projects can be found everywhere they’re planned,
which isn’t unusual given America's decades of car-centric planning and highway construction.

Why bother to make this
point today? Because highways and the vehicles that ride on them can’t begin to
accomplish the Honolulu rail project’s goals, which is this blog's focus these days.

Yes2Rail is in the final
three weeks of its direct connection with Honolulu rail. I’m paid to write
it as an educational tool to help Oahu residents understand the project, perhaps
better than they did before they stumbled onto this blog.

More on Mobility

There’s no better way to go
out than by focusing on those goals. As noted yesterday, Jerry
Comcowich’s constant badgering has pushed Yes2Rail in this direction, and
yesterday’s post quoted from one in July 2008 on rail’s big deliverable – the
restoration of mobility to residents and workers in the long southern Oahu urban
corridor.

Oahu’s population in 2030 is
expected to be 150,000 to 200,000 higher than it was in 2005 due to births and
migration to the island. The street and highway network in this already crowded
corridor will become even more congested, since there’s simply no more space
and no apparent public desire to pour more concrete for highways.

Honolulu’s elevated rail
system will restore mobility by allowing travelers to avoid that congestion.
They’ll enjoy traffic-free trips that, not incidentally, will be fast, frequent,
reliable and safe.

All those photographs of
at-grade rail accidents in Yes2Rail’s right-hand column aren’t there to fill space. They convey a message about the wisdom of building Honolulu’s elevated
system above all surface traffic – where it will be impossible to collide with
vehicles and pedestrians.

Predictable Arrivals

With the restoration of true
mobility, which can be loosely defined as the ability to pick up and go any time you want,
Honolulu residents will achieve something that eludes them today – knowing when
they’ll arrive at their destination. Here’s something from Yes2Rail’s August 14, 2008 post:

“If
you drive in Honolulu, you already know what a crap shoot it is to accurately
predict when you’ll arrive at your destination. Surface streets or freeway, it
makes no difference; traffic can block your progress when it’s least expected.
“Many of us have scratched our heads as
we sit in a jam on H-1 on days when ‘it shouldn’t be like this.’ We recall a
Saturday morning several weeks back when the highway was clogged for no
apparent reason other than everybody wanted to be on it at once.
“Rail will be different. Anyone who
chooses to ride the system through the urban corridor between ewa and downtown will know their exact time of
arrival before they even set foot on the train. Grade-separated transit is the
only transportation mode that can do that – well, aside from short trips by
foot.”

That’s worth repeating. Only
a transportation mode that’s separated from all other traffic throughout the
entire tripcan deliver you to
your destination on time, every time. Buses can't do that, and neither can toll roads.

That’s mobility in a
nutshell, and it’s only one of the rail project's Big Four goals. The
review continues tomorrow, but Yes2Rail can't sign off today without quoting a letter in today's Star-Advertiser in its entirety. It's full of experience-based wisdom:

People will learn to appreciate rail (Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7/23)

Years ago, I was in Chicago in the summer riding in an un-airconditioned cab from the airport.

It was hot and humid and traffic was moving at a snail's pace.

Then the train went by us at a steady pace, advancing through the gridlocked traffic like an ice breaker through the Arctic.

"Why didn't I take that instead?" I thought. It was cheaper, faster and air conditioned.

More recently I was in Phoenix
during baseball season. I drove to the stadium through heavy traffic and
paid $15 to park near to the stadium. The next time, I drove to a
closer park-and-ride lot, parked for free, and rode the air-conditioned
train to the front entrance of the stadium, for a $3 round trip. The advantages are not always apparent until you experience them.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

“What’s wrong with you?” the retired UH professor demands for the umpteenth
time. “Why don’t you write about rail’s goals in every one of your posts?”

I put up with a steady
stream of good-natured-but-earnest badgering by Jerry Comcowich because our
friendship dates to the summer of 1973 when I moved to Hawaii and my family settled into his Windward Side neighborhood.

“But I’ve written about
rail’s goals time and again,” I
protest, having convinced myself that constant repetition may drive down
my (apparently all-important) readership numbers. But that line of argument
does me no good with Dr. Comcowich.

“You’ve got to keep
reminding everyone – even the politicians – of why rail is being built!” he responds.
“Rail’s opponents have no way to accomplish rail’s goals with buses
or toll roads or anything else, so they stay as far away from those goals as
possible. You simply must write
about the goals!”

My contract to provide rail
project information to the community will be terminated in three weeks, so it
can’t hurt to give in to my old friend and go out with a flourish. The best way
to do that, he and I agree, is to remind everyone of what rail will accomplish.

“It’s Mobility, Stupid!”

We wrote in Yes2Rail’s first post on June 30, 2008 that the timing to launch the blog was good, since “the
second half of ’08 is going to be loaded with fireworks over the proposed
fixed-guideway rail transit project for Honolulu.” It was a conservative
prediction, since those fireworks are with us four years later, bolder and
louder than ever.

Something else written in
that first post is relevant to Dr. Comcowich’s constant admonitions today:

“Honolulu is closer than
ever to actually building a transit line that will restore mobility to a
population that has none in the traffic-choked 20 miles between west Oahu and
downtown Honolulu.”

Without knowing for sure
back then what rail’s primary goals were, Yes2Rail nevertheless highlighted one
of them in its first post – the restoration of mobility to the population.
Honolulu’s elevated rail line will be the means.

“”When your mode of
travel is separated from traffic,”
the post continued, “something wonderful happens: You can accurately predict
your arrival time…. Grade-separated transit speeds you to your destination without
having to contend with traffic jams, and that allows you to arrive at your
destination according to a timetable.”

The post began with a
reference to a two-part essay by Kanu Hawaii’s principals on the Honolulu rail
project that emphasized the need to respect the traditions of Aloha in the
islands rather than attack one another while debating the biggest project in
state history.

“What is at stake in
Oahu’s rail controversy?” they asked.
“If the proponents of the City’s plan to build a rail system are correct, this
is our last chance to build a critical transportation element that will ease
traffic congestion, clean the environment and spark positive economic
development.”

Yes2Rail then noted that the
mobility concept was missing in the essay:

“Easing traffic
congestion (some would say ‘solving traffic’) is not the core mission of this
project. Even the City says congestion will be only 11 percent less in 2030
than it would be without rail, and opponents continually attack the project on
this point while missing the bigger point.”

It’s worth pausing here to
accentuate rail’s traffic-mitigation mission. As far back as July 2008 we were
noting both the City’s honest predictions on future congestion – it will get
worse, with or without rail – and the opponents’ deceitful condemnation of the
project for its failure to prevent the inevitable. See our “aggregation site”
and the Mr. Cliff Slater (and
Friends) heading for many examples of this spurious accusation.

The July 22, 2008 post
continued: “It cannot be denied that rail will achieve mobility in the urban
corridor for commuters who have little or no unimpeded movement today. Rail
will allow those who choose to ride to move 20 miles back and forth through the
heart of our city, day in and day out, on time, every time, no matter the
congestion on streets and highways. THAT is what this project will accomplish.
It won’t and doesn’t pretend to ‘solve’ Oahu’s traffic problem.”

So we begin our final three
weeks under contract to the rail project with yet another reminder about urban
mobility and rail’s critical contribution to its restoration for this and all
the generations of this century.

It may be the umpteenth
time Yes2Rail has mentioned mobility, but knowing Dr. Jerome Comcowich, he'll want more! Stay tuned.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Where should Oahu residents
turn for the truth on why the city has been trying to build grade-separated
transit for decades?

Here are three places they shouldn’t go – HawaiiReporter.com, HonoluluTraffic.com and
HonoluluWeekly.com.

HawaiiReporter.com and HonoluluTraffic.com are
Internet-only sites, unlike
HonoluluWeekly.com, which mirrors the anti-rail content of the alternative
newspaper’s print edition.

The three websites are
anti-rail in philosophy and content and have been for years, but let’s look at
one particular current offering. HawaiiReporter’s latest contribution to mixing
up rail’s intent appeared yesterday in a commentary that was topped by this unusual
headline:

Rail Does Preserve or Protect Oahu's Open Spaces

It surely is right up there among
other local journalism gaffes, since only by adding the word Not does the headline reflect the commentary’s thrust.
But beyond the headline, the first two sentences of the piece deserve attention
because they misstate rail’s purpose:

“The main argument made
by pro railers to continue support for this rail plan outside of claims for
jobs or traffic relief, is that if you do not build the rail, future housing
development will threaten and eventually plague the Windward, North Shore, or
east Honolulu areas and all green space as we know it that is characterize
(sic) as ‘open space,’ will be jeopardized. The premise that keeping the
country country is only possible if rail is built is a complete farce.”

Everybody is free to provide
their own favorite reasons to build the 20-mile elevated rail guideway; of
course, but their “main argument“ isn’t about preserving open space. It’s just
one argument, but clearly, rail’s primary purpose is to provide a travel
option that will be completely unaffected by street and highway congestion.

For the record, here are
rail’s four main goals as described in the project’s Final Environmental Impact
Statement (summarized by Yes2Rail 18 months ago at the start of 2011:

• Improve corridor mobility – Congestion has increased steadily through the
decades and will continue to worsen in the decades ahead. The FEIS states: “Given
current and increasing levels of congestion, an alternative method of travel is
needed within the study corridor independent of current and projected highway
congestion.” In other words, Honolulu
rail will provide congestion-free travel through the urban corridor and thereby
restore true mobility – the ability to know both your departure and arrival
times for trips across town.

•
Improve corridor travel reliability – Car and bus travel are susceptible to delays that can occur
without warning. “This lack of predictability is inefficient and results in
lost productivity or free time,” the
FEIS states. “A need exists to provide more reliable transit services.” Honolulu rail will operate on a time table; train
travel from one end of the line to the other will take 42 minutes day in and
day out.

•
Improve access to planned development to support City policy to develop a
second urban center – Again
from the FEIS: “Accessibility to the overall `Ewa Development Plan area is
currently severely impaired by the congested roadway network, which will only
get worse in the future.” Without
improved accessibility to support Ewa’s growth, the area is less likely to
develop as outlined in the City’s General Plan for decades.

•
Improve transportation equity
– Proponents of elevated highways make no allowance for this goal in their
schemes to build high-occupancy toll (HOT) roads as an option to rail. They
ignore transportation equity, which the FEIS defines as “the fair
distribution of resources so that no group carries an unfair burden of the
negative environmental, social, or economic impacts or receives an unfair share
of benefits.” HOT lanes would serve
only those who can afford to pay the toll, an option that obviously ignores the
equity issue. Honolulu rail will provide fast, frequent, reliable and safe
travel to all groups of citizens, regardless of their income and age.

Tricky Predictions

Zeroing in on the author’s
intent, which is to marginalize the “open space” argument to support rail’s
construction, he seems to predict that since no major housing projects are
currently proposed outside the ewa
plain, they wouldn’t materialize if rail were killed either.

Predicting what the future
holds in rail’s absence is tricky business, but going to the source documents
once again can help clarify what might happen.

Here’s are quotes from the
FEIS’s paragraph 1.8.:

“Consistent with the
Honolulu General Plan, the highest population growth rates for the island are
projected in the Ewa Development Plan area…., which is expected to grow by
approximately 150 percent between 2000 and 2030. This growth represents nearly
50 percent of the total growth projected for the entire island. The communities
of Waianae, Wahiawa, North Shore, Windward Oahu, Waimanalo, and East Honolulu
will have much lower population growth of up to 23 percent, if
infrastructure policies support the planned growth rates in the Ewa Development
Plan area (emphasis added)….

“Accessibility to the
overall Ewa Development Plan area is currently severely impaired by the
congested roadway network, which will only get worse in the future. This
area is less likely to develop as planned unless it is accessible to Downtown
and other parts of Oahu; therefore, the Ewa Development plan area needs
improved accessibility to support its future planned growth(emphasis added).”

There in a nutshell is the
rail-preserves-open-space argument within the FEIS, a document that’s been
approved at all levels of government during the rail project’s planning
process.

Failure to build rail would
put added pressure on the ewa
region’s road network. Since Oahu’s population will continue to grow, housing
to accommodate that growth will have to go someplace. There’s only so much urban
space available for that growth, so it’s not unreasonable to suggest pressures
would increase to build that housing elsewhere on the island.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Let’s get out of the daily
give-and-take on Honolulu rail and see what’s being said on the mainland about
transportation. It might just be educational.

From today’s San Jose Mercury News: “With his most
public cheerleading yet for California's bullet train, Gov. Jerry Brown on
Wednesday signed the $8 billion bill to kick off high-speed rail construction
and showed no sign he was worried about voters' increasing skepticism for the
rail line.

“Calling naysayers
‘NIMBYs,’ ‘fearful men,’ and ‘declinists,’ the governor celebrated a project
that he first signed a bill to study 30 years ago…. ’This legislation will
help put thousands of people in California back to work. By improving regional
transportation systems, we are investing in the future of our state and making
California a better place to live and work,’ Brown said.”

If this sounds familiar to
Honolulu ears, it should. Much of California high-speed rail commentary
is also said about the Honolulu project – from both sides of the issue.

Local critics led by
anti-railer-in-chief Cliff Slater have criticized the construction plan for
Honolulu rail, which will be built in phases. The earliest will connect Kapolei
with Waipahu and Aloha Stadium, and critics laugh off the ridership projections
between those points.

There’s a similar complaint
in California. Critics there ridicule the high-speed line’s initial
construction in the Central Valley between Madera and Bakersfield. “These
are not exactly major centers of business and culture,”sniffs one nay-sayer.

Transportation projects have
to start somewhere, of course, and Honolulu rail supporters counter the
criticism by noting that wherever the first phase is built, a maintenance and
storage facility must be located adjacent to it.

Work on Honolulu’s 43-acre
MSF began last year on a site just off Farrington Highway between Leeward
Community College and Waipahu High School. Carving out space that
large in urban Honolulu for the MSF would have been too costly with too much impact on the community,
which is why the project is proceeding from west to east.

Author Clifford Winston
notes early in his article: “It is already possible to imagine a world in which
you could predict exactly how long it would take to drive in your car from one
point to another. No worries about rush hour, vacation congestion, bad drivers,
speed traps and accidents. You could also text while you drive with no safety
implications.”

Ironically, those are
exactly the same arguments Honolulu rail supporters make about the project. As
we’ve noted repeatedly here at Yes2Rail, grade-separated transit is
the only travel mode that allows users to accurately predict their time of
arrival before they even start their trip.

Deep into his piece, Mr.
Winston reveals what may really be driving the push for high-tech driverless
systems, a recurring desire of car advocates to create exclusive highway lanes that only the well-to-do could routinely
afford:

“The future also holds
the promise of new communications technologies that could let road authorities
use electronic tolls to charge motorists for their contribution to congestion,
based on actual traffic conditions, and thus encourage them to travel during
off-peak periods, use alternative routes, or switch to public transit. Driverless
cars would significantly help motorists respond to congestion tolls because
their technology can balance the cost of a toll with its travel time savings to
optimize motorists’ route choices.”

Anti-rail UH professor Panos
Prevedouros put it more succinctly a couple years ago: “Higher tolls are
necessary to discourage overloading.”

As we commented at the time,
“Vehicles presumably can travel relatively congestion-free on
(high-occupancy toll) lanes (when there are no accidents) only because most people decline to pay the high tolls. They’re left to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic
on the other highways.”

The same would be true in
Mr. Winston’s high-tech car-dominant future society. It’s a vision that truly
hard to imagine happening on Oahu anytime before 2050 at the earliest, yet
congestion-free through-town travel will be achieved with the completion of the
Honolulu rail project’s 20-mile line by 2020.

Finally, National Public
Radio’s “All Things Considered” program aired a segment yesterday that’s
recommended listening for Oahu residents as they ponder the never-ending debate
on the island’s future – with or without rail transit.

NPR’s ongoing “cities
project” reports on the state of urban America. ATC’s story Wednesday afternoon said its
next few series segments will examine cities’ relationship with cars. One city
examined yesterday is the nation’s capital, where the director of Washington’s
Office of Planning says there’s a shift under way from decades of car-focused
transportation planning.

“We’ve begun more than a
decade-long effort to rebalance our transportation system, in part because we
just don’t have the capacity in the city to accommodate everybody who wants to
be here to work or to live if everyone was always in an automobile for every
trip,” says Harriet Tregoning.

More transportation options
are good for not just commuters but city residents, too, she says: “People are
using these other transportation modes, and it’s making it possible for
restaurants and other businesses to open in all kinds of neighborhoods
throughout the city.”

The ATC piece is informative
listening, including how cities collaborated with the automobile industry to
create an urban landscape that’s been overwhelmed by cars and the road
infrastructure to support them for the past century.

That’s changing all over
America, and it’s changing in Honolulu, too. As Governor Brown said yesterday: "What is is all about is investing in the future. I know there are some fearful men – I call them declinists – who want to put their head in a hole and hope reality changes. I don't see it that way. This is a time to invest, to create thousands of jobs."

This Isn't Political

Yes2Rail is a blog about the Honolulu rail transit project, which has become the key issue in this year’s mayoral race. We comment on the candidates’ plans to address Oahu’s growing congestion problem and whether those plans could meet the need as well as elevated rail can and will. That’s not the same as criticizing the candidates, and we urge our readers to recognize the difference.

Another red-light runner meets Denver at-grade train, 6.13.12

Honolulu rail will be elevated, with zero possibility for accidents like those shown in this column in cities with at-grade systems. Visit our "aggregation site" for much more on why elevated rail is the only reasonable way to build Honolulu rail.

What riding the train will avoid

Bus Accident Aftermath on H-1

'Black Tuesday'--9/5/06 Crash Produced Nightmare Commute

Typical H-1 Traffic

About Me

After five years of active-duty service as an Army officer with duty stations in West Berlin and South Vietnam, reported and edited for newspapers and broadcast stations (including all-news radio) in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Honolulu. Covered Honolulu city government for the Honolulu Advertiser and KGMB-TV. Served on Congressman Cec Heftel's staff in Honolulu and Washington, then managed corporate communications and was Hawaiian Electric Company's spokesman for nearly a decade. A communications consultant for 19 years before moving to California in 2012. Launched, produced and hosted Hawaii Public Radio's "live" weekly "Energy Futures" public affairs program in 2009-10. Authored books on The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific ("Punchbowl" 1982) and on the decline of standard grammar in business and society ("Me and Him Are Killing English!" 2007). Now an information officer with the California Department of Water Resources.